Apr 19, 2023Ed. Note: This article was previously posted at IoP Journal.
Ever since the Digital Product Passport (DPP) began to be openly announced at European Union (EU) events, I have been saying that this transformation in the way products will be traded in the bloc's countries will impact trade worldwide. In addition, the circular economy goals set by Europe will certainly reach all countries globally, in a cascading effect (see AIPIA Congress Reveals Impacts of New Digital Product Passport).
However, most companies and their executives behave completely, oblivious to what is happening. In Brazil, for example, amidst political scandals, as well as tragedies of all kinds and uncertainties in the conduct of economic policy, the DPP and its challenges—and also opportunities—seem to be getting out of the visual reach of business strategists, as if they were navigators within a short-range lake and not in an ocean of long journeys.
Because of this, IoP Journal decided to measure knowledge about the DPP in the market, and to seek the vision of some better-informed companies in relation to strategic investments in technologies that could make the product passport a reality. To that end, we created a survey questionnaire titled "Can the European Union Digital Product Passport (DPP) Transform Your Business?" The survey contains ten questions, and you can click here to answer them.
There are very quick questions, the answers to which will help us to develop better content for you to understand the DPP and create business opportunities for your company, and to guide providers of smart supply chain and smart packaging technologies, such as radio frequency identification (RFID), QR codes, barcodes and digital printing, among others. This will help companies adapt to the new reality of their customers and prospects, and to thus do more business.
The worlds of smart supply chain and smart packaging (intelligent packaging) will no longer be the same after the Digital Product Passport, whose acronym DPP is and will be present in all conversations about it from now on. Like every business challenge of the 21st century, the DPP is revealing a market of companies that lack new technologies to support new advances and compliance requirements.
The DPP concept reinforces smart packaging as a set of tools that integrate global technological solutions for tracking, authenticity, sustainability and customer experience. This allows the delivery of the long-awaited—and now required—circular economy, by 2050. "Required" because the European Union has established a calendar for adapting products to the new DPP rules, and a deadline for reaching the mandatory status of circulation throughout production lines.
With growing attention and concerns regarding the degradation of the environment, which impose a reduction of material discards and their reuse by processing and production lines, businesses are turning to smart packaging technologies. The greatest DPP change is happening through legislation and leveraging green and digital transformations, in Europe and (by extension) the entire world. The European Union regulation refers to the DPP as a set of specific data about a product, which includes that specified in the delegated act, and it must be accessible electronically through a data medium, which resembles everything that proposes the basic concept of smart packaging.
Thus, the DPP must ensure that actors throughout the entire value chain, including consumers, economic operators and competent national authorities, can access information about products. It is vital to improve traceability along the value chain, facilitate verification of compliance by competent national authorities, and include the necessary data attributes to allow the tracking of all "substances of concern" throughout the lifecycle of covered products.
This shows the impacts of the regulation and opens our imagination to the business opportunities for this new level of technological maturity of our companies and products. Are you prepared? Click here and answer us.
Edson Perin is the editor of IoP Journal Brasil and the founder of Netpress Books Editora, a pioneer company in the production and distribution of content to radio, TV and Internet, and the publication of books on technologies for business.